On my journey this morning I sat behind two friends having the most entertaining conversation. One of this pair was an elderly lady that clearly had more than a light scattering of alzheimers the other was just plain stupid. The lady reminisced about rail junctions that have never existed and the mail coach of old. Her companion remarked that you rarely saw royal mail trucks on the road since they tended to use rail. When the lady remarked that since she no longer smokes she doesn’t have to walk to the front of the train he observed that “the smoking car is in first class only nowadays”.

They merrily chatted throughout the first leg of the journey and it was like listening to two 5 year olds with overly mature voices. As I left the train I was struck by the fact that this was two adults who actually inhabited an entirely different world from the rest of us, probably a nicer one.

Further into the journey I was greeted with another example of lazy English. Yesterday’s trip was abandoned due to the chaos ensuing from a fatality much further south and obviously it takes some time for the service to recover. Today there were still some short forms and odd starts as they recovered stock and crew positions, all to be expected. Some bright spark had announced that the disruption was “due to an earlier fatality” which was technically true.

The thing is whilst yesterday is indeed ‘earlier’ it is more accurately described as ‘yesterday’ that’s why we have that word. I heard repeated astonished conversations today about the suicide wave hitting the south. With a simple linguistic mistake a routine one under had transformed into a dark and ominous rash of suicides!

In other news I have finally updated my facebook profile to a picture of me. I know that this doesn’t seem a big deal but, since I’m not a teenage girl and therefore not obsessed with ‘selfies’, I consider it newsworthy. The update was greeted with a swathe of comments most of which wouldn’t encourage a person to post their picture! What is interesting is the opinion on beards, mine having reached 4 weeks now.

I had always considered beards to be something that women hated, I guess because of the prospect of kissing a broom. The current straw poll results seem to show that women are not as adverse to facial hair as I thought. I think that the results may be somewhat flawed though because, as I have noted before, I am brother material. So whilst the beard may be approved that is probably similar to approving of your father wearing braces, it suits him but that is not to say you would appreciate it in a partner.

Something that has really surprised me is the reaction of men. As a rule men do not compliment each other, we just don’t. Several guys have remarked that a beard suits me which is quite an odd thing. But stranger still is those that have a degree of beard envy. This is not a nasty envy, I guess it is the equivalent of cleavage envy in women (admit it) it’s just a recognition that you can do something they can’t. I have noticed that those who say things like “some guys can do beards and some can’t” generally fall into the latter group.

I guess these are the people who know that if they were recovered from a shipwreck the first thing they would do is shave. Like a bald man knows that he won’t grow a ponytail and a straight man knows he can’t dance they are not beard growers. For me I am not sure where the beard goes, it wasn’t started consciously I just couldn’t be bothered to shave. I keep contemplating a ‘tidy up’ but for me that defeats the point of not shaving. Not scraping a razor over my face every day has left my skin in much better condition but then that can hardly be a surprise can it? I’m sure that if I just leave it alone a plan will form. . .

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